A year ago, before I became a mother, if someone would have asked me if I was going to co-sleep with my daughter I would have laughed at them. In fact, I will admit, I judged people who co-slept. Needless to say, since the birth of my darling I have made quite a few apologies and, once again, been humbled by motherhood. As it turns out, you don’t necessarily have a choice in the matter, babies sleep where they like. And mine, liked to be right next to me.
This was fine for the first 5 months of her life, we had this great co-sleeper set up next to our bed, and then it happened, she outgrew the crib. I never even gave that scenario a thought, what was I going to do next and why hadn’t I thought about her growing!? The obvious choice was to transition her to her crib. Easy, right? No, wrong! The beautiful white crib with the expensive organic breathable mattress was not something this child wanted any part of!
I did some reading, some Googling, some desperate Facebook pleas for help and ultimately “did what was best for our family” and put the baby in bed with us! Still nervous, I made sure to follow the safe co-sleeping guidelines and looked up images and studies and even hit up the almighty Pinterest for further guidance, but it worked, she slept, and we slept! Now I will be honest, this wasn’t a miracle and she still doesn’t sleep through the night (that’s a story for another post), but she sleeps mostly well!
I did, however, have a very hard time telling people she slept with me, I was going against the “norm” and I didn’t want to be judged. You know, like I had done pre-baby! Then one day something wonderful happened, the co-sleeping taboo was broken. A dear friend posted a sweet picture her husband took of her asleep with her two kids in their bed and she posted it to Facebook. And then, if by magic, post after post after post of people saying that’s how there families also sleep and suddenly no one felt quite so alone! And we could laugh and joke about the craziness of these little humans tucked into our beds. Who hasn’t been in the position of deciding if getting out of bed to go to the bathroom is worth the potential wake up? Or remember that time I got the stomach flu in the middle of the night? It was fantastic and freeing and made me feel so comfortable knowing there were other moms in the trenches with me. My daughter was not one of those babies you could put down in their crib drowsy but awake and have them drift off into peaceful slumber, but as it turns out, neither are a lot of kids. So as I lay here, typing this blog, my little one is next to me safe and sound and asleep, for now…and that makes me very happy and very blessed.
